(CNN) – As he waited with parents who feared that their kids were among the 20 children killed at a Connecticut elementary school on Friday, Rabbi Shaul Praver said the main thing he could do for parents was to merely be present.

“It’s a terrible thing, families waiting to find out if their children made it out alive,” said Praver, who leads a synagogue in Newtown, Connecticut, and was among nine clergy gathered with parents at a firehouse near Sandy Hook Elementary School, where the shooting occurred.

“They’re going to need a lot of help,” Praver said of those who are close to the dead.

From the first moments after Friday’s massacre, which also left six adults and the shooter dead, religious leaders were among the first people to whom worried and grieving families turned for help.

Over the weekend, countless more Americans will look to clergy as they struggle to process a tragedy in which so many of the victims were children.

“Every single person who is watching the news today is asking ‘Where is God when this happens?’” says Max Lucado, a prominent Christian pastor and author based in San Antonio.

Lucado says that pastors everywhere will be scrapping their scheduled Sunday sermons to address the massacre.

“You have to address it - you have to turn everything you had planned upside down on Friday because that’s where people’s hearts are,” Lucado says.

“The challenge here is to avoid the extremes – those who say there are easy answers and those who say there are no answers.”

Indeed, many religious leaders on Friday stressed that the important thing is for clergy to support those who are suffering, not to rush into theological questions. A University of Connecticut professor on Friday hung up the phone when asked to discuss religious responses to suffering, saying, “This is an immense tragedy, and you want an academic speculating on the problem of evil?”

“There is no good answer at that time that anyone can hear and comprehend and take in,” said Ian T. Douglas, the bishop for the Episcopal diocese of Connecticut, referring to counseling family and friends of the dead. “They’re crying out from a place of deep pain.”

Praver, the rabbi, will join a memorial service Friday night at Newtown’s St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church.

“We’re going to have a moment of prayer for the victims,” Praver said of the service. “We cannot let it crush our spirit and we march on.”

Some national religious groups are also sending staff to Newtown, with 10 chaplains dispatched from the North Carolina-based Billy Graham Evangelistic Association on Friday.

Public officials including President Obama, meanwhile, turned to the Bible in responding to the shooting. “In the words of Scripture, 'heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds,' ” Obama said from the White House, citing the book of Psalms.

Some religious leaders argue that modern American life insulates much of the nation from the kind of senseless death and suffering that plagues much of the world every day.

“Most of the world, for most of the world’s history, has known tragedy and trauma in abundance,” wrote Rob Brendle, a Colorado pastor, in a commentary for CNN’s Belief Blog after this summer’s deadly shooting in Aurora, Colorado, which left 12 dead.

“You don’t get nearly the same consternation in Burundi or Burma, because suffering is normal to there,” wrote Brendle, who pastored congregants after a deadly shooting at his church five years ago. “For us, though, God has become anesthetist-in-chief. To believe in him is to be excused from bad things.”

Lucado said there was an eerie irony for the Connecticut tragedy coming just before Christmas, noting the Bible says that Jesus Christ’s birth was followed by an order from King Herod to slay boys under 2 in the Roman city of Bethlehem.

“The Christmas story is that Jesus was born into a dark and impoverished world,” Lucado says. “His survival was surrounded by violence. The real Christmas story was pretty rough.”

Many religious leaders framed Friday’s shooting as evidence for evil in the world and for human free will in the face of a sovereign God.

“The Bible tells us the human heart is ‘wicked’ and ‘who can know it?’” the Rev. Franklin Graham said in a statement about the massacre. “My heart aches for the victims, their families and the entire community.”

Many religious leaders also said that such tragedies are a good time for lay people to express doubts about God – or anger.

“This is a time to go deep and pray,” says Lucado. “If you have a problem with God, shake a fist or two at him. If he’s God, he’s going to answer. And if he’s in control, he’ll find a way to let you know.

soundoff(9,195 Responses)

Wow, some people are asking "where's God"?. That's really a laugh, the people of the USA know where he is, where they wanted him, out of the schools, that's for sure. From the laws being passed, they want him out of the whole US too. Equality among the people doesn't nesessarily mean it's O.K. to live a decadent (a state of moral or cultural decline) lifestyle. The US are a self indulgent people, If I want to do drugs or get stoned on marijuana, it should be O.K. If men want to lie with men & womem with women, that should be o.k. Nothing should be immoral. Long Live Rome... The founding fathers would be turning over in their graves if they could see what their country has become. The US is following the world in becoming a cesspool of immoral behavior, or maybe there's no such word as immoral anymore? But in times of trouble, what is said-"Where's God"? How funny.

December 15, 2012 at 2:32 pm |

GAW

It seems as if some Religious Right forum told people to come over the CNN Belief blog and post the same dribble about taking God out of the schools.

December 15, 2012 at 2:35 pm |

Sean

Well said.

December 15, 2012 at 2:36 pm |

Bingo

It is indeed stunning that they all come over with EXACTLY the same opinion. Is there a religious version of Rush Limbaugh pumpiong out this propaganda for the dingbats so use as their opinions?

December 15, 2012 at 2:45 pm |

Sweden seems to be doing pretty well without god

.

December 15, 2012 at 2:46 pm |

mama k

Oh really – you mean like these founding fathers??

Listen to James Madison, POTUS #4, and the chief architect of the U.S. Constitution:

During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.

(A Remonstrance . . to the Virginia General Assembly in 1785.)

Listen to John Adams, POTUS #2:

I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved – the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced! With the rational respect that is due to it, knavish priests have added prostitutions of it, that fill or might fill the blackest and bloodiest pages of human history. "

(in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, 09/03/1816)

The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.

(from A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America [1787-1788])

Listen to Ben Franklin:

Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of the sermons which had been preached at Boyle’s Lectures. It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them. For the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to be much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist.

(from his Autobiography)

Thomas Paine was very Deistic. He witness Quakers being hung in Massachusetts by other Christians:

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

Thomas Jefferson had his own Deistic version of the Bible.

Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.

(from Notes on the State of Virginia)

Of course Deism holds to the belief of God as the creator of the universe. But many Deists also believed that God did not interfere with the lives of his creation. And many Deists disbelieved in all of the "magic" in the Bible – some of them refuting the Bible and Christianity completely.

Jefferson, Washington, Adams, Paine, Mason & Madison all witnessed the violent persecution between Christian sects in their home states around the time the government was being established. So it is of no surprise that they needed a secular government and they knew the only way to enforce freedom of religion was to keep religion out of the government as much as possible.

Listen to James Madison speak about the need for the need to keep religion out of government (Jefferson wasn't the only one to explicitly speak of the separation of church and state):

Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

The Civil Govt, tho' bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability and performs its functions with complete success, Whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the Priesthood, & the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the Church from the State.

(from letters to Edward Livingston and Robert Walsh)

Madison as president vetoed two bills that he believed would violate the separation of church and state. He also came to oppose the long-established practice of employing chaplains at public expense in the House of Representatives and Senate on the grounds that it violated the separation of church and state and the principles of religious freedom. (Library of Congress – James Madison Papers – Detached memorandum, ca. 1823.)

President John Adams and the U.S. Senate on behalf of the U.S.

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion;

(from Article 11 of the U.S. treaty ratified with Tripoli in 1797)

Senator John F Kennedy said on Sept. 12, 1960, just prior to his winning the Presidential election:

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.

December 15, 2012 at 2:46 pm |

Stentor

Funny how the theists always blame separation of church & state for the problems of society in America. Absence of religion does not impy immorality, or decadence, I thoroughly reject your paradigm. People have been saying things like that for hundreds of years, it's no different now.
Ethics encompass morality because morality is nothing more than religious ethics, so it is possible to live a good & just life without religion or moralistic puritans scolding you because you don't adhere to their degree of religiousity in society.

Your god only exists in your mind. Deal with it.

December 15, 2012 at 2:47 pm |

YES! Where is god?

If god can't be bothered to save 20 innocent children from slaughter, he's certainly not going to bother to answer any other prayers. He either does not exist or has chosen to be totally impotent

December 15, 2012 at 2:53 pm |

Kijvera

God hasn't been taken out of churches has he? He's totally welcome there with open arms is he not?

And yet, that hasn't stopped a significant number of priests from molesting young children has it?

If God can't stop some of his own servants from harming children, then how can he stop a madman from shooting up a school, regardless of whether he is weclome there or not?

Where God is weclome or not is irrelevant, or should be for a supreme being. In fact I find it hard to understand much about God at all to be honest. On the one hand he has a plan for us all, yet supposedly we all have free will. He is also a non-interventionist God, and yet he will answer prayers?

It is all quite paradoxical, and highly confusing.

December 15, 2012 at 3:15 pm |

GAW

Apologetics has one primary aim....Cover God's a ss.

December 15, 2012 at 2:31 pm |

Safety of the North

A sacred truth, indeed! Never thought of it that way....

December 15, 2012 at 2:37 pm |

citizen bob

First of all, my most heartfelt condolences to friends and family in Newton. Nothing I can write can help those poor people feel less pain.

I think, the question here is why do bad things happen to good people?
This question seems to be a very old one for humanity. The Book of Job is a story about such a question, why me? Unfortunately Job's response to his question was basically, humanity will never really know that answer. Job carried on as best as he could to restore the aspects of his life he lost. I don't really know if an actual Job existed and some ancient Hebrew scribe recorded his story or not. But I believe that some ancient Hebrew sage(s) may have been reflecting on that question of why me and came up with the story, and the answer; we'll never really know.
Belief in a God or not doesn't really help with finding the answer why did this happen to me, except we try o carry on as best as we can. Unfortunately Job's story was reborn in Connecticut yesterday.
This is my home state and this story is breaking our hearts. The best you all can do is to allow people to try to navigate through this the best they can, if its through religion, or not, let them do what they need to do. Don't judge at this point.

December 15, 2012 at 2:30 pm |

Bootyfunk

the story of Job...

God makes a bet with the Devil. God grants the Devil permission to destroy Job's life - including killing his family, destroying his house and crops, covering Job with boils, etc. all this WITH God's permission. and God actually loses - Job blasphemes him. but then God comes down and threatens Job, so Job takes it back - thus God wins the bet. lol. seems like he lost and then acted like a bully to say he won. at any rate, this story shows how sick God is, utterly disgusting. without his permission, the Devil wouldn't have been able to murder Job's children.

December 15, 2012 at 2:33 pm |

citizen bob

I guess you didn't get my point. If you're atheist, then why concern yourself with the story? If you're of an Abrahamic faith, don't try to explain what isn't explainable.

December 15, 2012 at 2:44 pm |

Bootyfunk

are you really asking this or just trolling? if there weren't christian law makers trying to shove their religion down everyone's throat, if christians didn't keep evolution from being taught in schools, if churches paid taxes, if religion didn't try to control women's bodies.... there's quite a few reasons for atheists to be interested in religion - because you keep trying to shove it down our throats. and of course there the fact that if you're religious, you're in a cult. cults are bad for you. atheists like people to think for themselves.

December 15, 2012 at 3:00 pm |

citizen bob

The second point, which you missed was to be compassionate for the people in Newton and don't get on your soap box trying to bully people into believing or disbelieving in what you do. Now is not the time for any agenda pushing. This is addressed to both atheists and theists. Now, you said that atheists want "people to think for themselves", but i guess that's not true if they don't think like you? By the way, I never said that I was theist or atheist, I simply referred to a well known story to try to comfort people in pain. I have read the Hobbit, and as i recall, trolls were socially insensitive clods that don't care about others' perspectives.
My blog is to relate to people who lost their family and friends, not to provide a spring board for your rant.

December 15, 2012 at 3:17 pm |

Patricia Beckish

GOD gave use free will. With it we let our courts and leaders remove him from our schools. Until we stand up as Christians, and tell our courts and our leaders. To put GOD back in our class rooms. We will continue to see this kind of evil.
Please pray for these families and their children. Then take a stand to fight For The United States, One Nation Under GOD.

December 15, 2012 at 2:30 pm |

John Sharp

The last thing we need is one particular religious group trying to place their ideas for education in our school system. Keep your religious beliefs to yourself and I will keep my contempt for you quiet.

So, God is pist over separation of church and state, so he slaughtered even more innocent children that had nothing to do with that decision?

God created evil. He could stop it. He doesn't.

December 15, 2012 at 2:59 pm |

Gopal

There is god and there isn't god is the reality one half god and one half the opposite

December 15, 2012 at 2:28 pm |

Bootyfunk

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

- David Hume, echoing the logical formulation that we have dubbed the "Epicurean Riddle"

December 15, 2012 at 2:27 pm |

Allen

Exactly what I was thinking...

December 15, 2012 at 2:34 pm |

roccop777

Just as a superior SWAT force doesn't step in, with brute force in a hostage scenario, but restrains itself in order to preserve the life as many hostages as possible, so too does the Almighty God hold back His superior force in order to give the opportunity and time for as many hostages (sinful, lost humans) to be freed. He has even sent His own Son in a "hostage swap" - taking the place of the hopeless and dying in their place, which is undeniable proof, that He is not indifferent to our dilemma. Just as the SWAT team knows, raw, brute force is not the right solution, if you really care for the hostages, so too, God holds back His judgment out of mercy.

December 15, 2012 at 2:48 pm |

Bootyfunk

i want whatever drugs you're on.

December 15, 2012 at 3:01 pm |

Jennifer

OMG. You ask where is God and I ask you did you let him in. Last I heard he was banned from schools

Which god are you willing to let kids pray to in schools? Allah? Odin? Gaea?

December 15, 2012 at 2:36 pm |

Mister Jones

Well, then you think he might have made an exception in this case. We are talking about children after all.

December 15, 2012 at 2:36 pm |

amazedamerican

So ... being with unlimited power wont lift a finger to intervene in lives that have barely begun yet... because we didnt 'let him in'? you see nothing wrong with your statement at all?

and you wonder why your stone age beliefs are being rejected by more and more people?

December 15, 2012 at 2:38 pm |

onemorehere

God is able to eleminate evil, evil resides with in menkind's hearts is call 'sin' there for God granted repentence so we can be saved in the name of Jesus Christ, to eliminate evil is to aliminate the child he love there for evil is allowed to happen til we repent and accept our heavenly father as our savior... When God's last child depart this earth God will have no mercy on evil and it will be eliminated...there'll be only peace and joy in the heavens...said the lord our God.

December 15, 2012 at 2:25 pm |

John Sharp

pure primitive drivel

December 15, 2012 at 2:33 pm |

Compton Sike

There is no such thing as "sin", no such thing as your imaginary god, and if you were to actually read your bible you'd see that the original "sin" of Adam and Eve was in developing an abstract moral intelligence instead of remaining cretinous animals in the jungle. Try reading it sometime. That's how atheists are born.

It's not complicated. God is an incedible, loving and sacrificial God, but he doesn't control people, he gives us free will. People make decisions to do this stuff. You can't blame Him.

If more people were actual followers of Jesus, lived by his words and didn't just visit a church building weekly, many less of these things would happen.

December 15, 2012 at 2:24 pm |

Kip

Insane people have no free will.

Those victims do not have free will – only the killer has any choice.

The killer was raised in a church-going Catholic family.

December 15, 2012 at 2:28 pm |

GAW

And Sweden is one of the the most atheistic countries and we read very little about things like this happening there.

December 15, 2012 at 2:28 pm |

Me

God isn't allowed in schools...

December 15, 2012 at 2:24 pm |

B Troll

Neither is Satan.

December 15, 2012 at 2:25 pm |

apostate

omnipresent fail

December 15, 2012 at 2:27 pm |

Bet

God was allowed in Oikos University, but apparently he was busy answering Tim Tebow's prayers when those seven people were killed.

December 15, 2012 at 2:37 pm |

elena

For you all ignorant atheist, to say "is there a moon outside there regardless of an observer" its actually a famous phrase said by Einstein. Actually his original phrase was " "I like to believe that the moon is still there even if we don't look at it."

ohh!!!!! well, may be one day i will find one atheist as intelligent as i am to debate with! and without having to insult or punch each other, just a pure intelligent debate

Elana, my dear, I accept your challenge! I assume that you believe in a god. perhaps you can start by describing the attributes of your god, and then provide your case as to why I should believe this god of your exists.

as you sit and insult atheists over and over. want to debate? any day, tiger. if you're religious - you fail at logic.

December 15, 2012 at 2:29 pm |

elena

sorry but, ignorance is not an insult, is a condition, I am ignorant of the Chinese culture for say, or I am ignorant as to what is there beyond death, for example! see, you wont win a debate with me. if you don't have a strong argument better do not reply to my comments!
And i don't say i do have strong debating skills, my university professors have said it!

December 15, 2012 at 2:30 pm |

biobraine

If I wanted to engage in an intelligent debate with someone I disagreed with, I wouldn't start my post off with "For all you ignorant atheists". I often see a non-believer ask simple questions that make the believer angry and defensive. Questioning your beliefs is not the same as insulting you.

December 15, 2012 at 2:32 pm |

Attack of the 50 Foot Magical Underwear

@ elena – ooh, university professors have decreed you a debater most masterful. Goody.

Again, please begin: you are the one positing the existence of a god. Let's hear your arguments.

December 15, 2012 at 2:33 pm |

Zombie Jesus' Sermon on the Mounties!

Elana is insane-a. No two ways about it.

December 15, 2012 at 2:34 pm |

elena

Attack of the 50 Foot Magical Underwear,

i believe all that exist is consciousness, all we see, hear, and bla bla is just a simulation of the mind created by a whole bunch of electromagnetic impulses carrying information from one brain particle too another. In Science it is believe that all mater is made of particles and particles made of energy. During the double slit experiment was observed that mater when not observe behaves like a wave, hence the wave function of particles, but when you observe mater it changes to be a particle with location and momentum. The idea of a conscious observer creating the hologram we called universe is like the elephant in the room for scientist. but the evidence is there.

So yeah I believe that within that wave of consciousness scientist call a electromagnetic field, there is room for a higher level of consciousness and power

December 15, 2012 at 2:37 pm |

Bet

The difference is that you can see the moon, men have walked on the moon. We have material that was brought back from the moon. The moon exists because it is made of matter, we know that because we have samples of that matter.

No one has seen god, no matter how long and hard they search, and no matter how much they want to find him.

December 15, 2012 at 2:41 pm |

elena

biobraine, i have started my debate very politely by just asking atheist the following question 'is there a moon out there regardless of an observer" and all i got from them was insults and sarcasm! so if that is how they understand they i will use the same tactic with them! very

intelligent of me huh!

December 15, 2012 at 2:43 pm |

Attack of the 50 Foot Magical Underwear

"So yeah I believe that within that wave of consciousness scientist call a electromagnetic field, there is room for a higher level of consciousness and power"

Okay, assuming for the sake of your argument the pseudo-science set out in your second paragraph, you state that there is "room for a higher level of consciousness and power". You have not proven the existence, nor have you defined, this higher level of consciousness and power. Even assuming it exists, you have not established how this power is in any way divine or related to a deity. Finally, the fact that there is room for something does not mean that something exists. I have room in my back yard for an elephant playing football with a hippo, and yet, they are not there.

Seriously, is that it? Is that all you have? THAT is your argument?

December 15, 2012 at 2:46 pm |

Nitrogen

Ok Elena, how about this. Can you explain why Yahweh Sabaoth, the Babylonian god of war, along with Asheara and Baal, were the gods of the Hebrews shortly after the fall of Babylon? A while later, King Josiah banned the worship of Baal and Asheara because he wanted to invade other nations by the power of Yahweh, the bloodiest god of war ever. Later, various other religious icons (Horus, Mithras, etc) were merged into the idea of Jesus, and then all of a sudden, God was more or less peaceful.

December 15, 2012 at 2:47 pm |

elena

Bet, please you lack the level of understanding to actually understand the implication of what was observed in the double slit experiment, so please better don't reply to my post!

December 15, 2012 at 2:48 pm |

Anon

Simply ram a bible up your ass.

December 15, 2012 at 2:53 pm |

elena

Attack of the 50 Foot Magical Underwear, why should i prove the obvious! if you cant see it then i cant do anything about it. but I can give an example of levels of consciousness. For example we tend to assume that animals are not smart, which is wrong!. Animals are very smart, how ever they are trapped in a level of consciousness or awareness different than humans. Only humans could develop something so sophisticated like the Mayan long count calendar, and that is because humans level of understanding is in different than the rest of living beings, so why there cant be a higher level of understanding that is beyond human comprehension that will allow us to see what we cant within our limited level of consciousness?

December 15, 2012 at 2:53 pm |

Attack of the 50 Foot Magical Underwear

And, the fact that a thing's existence is not contingent on it being observed does not prove that it exists. I claim that there is a giant green pineapple on the moon. Now, if such a pineapple existed, its existence would not be contingent on anyone observing it. But, if I am the one claiming the existence of the pineapple, then the onus is on me to prove, through sufficiently probative and reliable evidence, that the pineapple exists.

Now, subst-itute god for the moon pineapple in the above example, and provide your argument, Ms. Master Debater, for the existence of a god.

December 15, 2012 at 2:53 pm |

Attack of the 50 Foot Magical Underwear

Elena, the possibility that something might exist is not proof that it exists. You didn't really go to university, did you?

December 15, 2012 at 2:54 pm |

elena

Attack of the 50 Foot Magical Underwear, actually for your surprise, science says that the laws of physics do allow for a green pineapple to exist on the moon!

December 15, 2012 at 2:57 pm |

Attack of the 50 Foot Magical Underwear

Oh, Elena – I'll speak slowly: the fact that there is a possibility of something existing – a green moon pineapple, a god – does not prove that it DOES exist.

What university did you go to?

December 15, 2012 at 3:02 pm |

Stentor

No such thing as a god that cares about humans, that's medieval mythology catering to the vanity of man thinking he's special in a universe with 200,000,000,000 galaxies with over 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. Not even counting the possiblity of the multiverse with other dimensions in a hyperspatial existence.
To think that some god cares about you as an individual is to similarly posit the paradigm that the President of the United States cares about every flea, gnat, fruit fly, mite, bed bug, lice, & ant in America, yeah right.

God doesn't even know you exist. Deal with it.

December 15, 2012 at 2:24 pm |

CalGuy

That's your take.

I look at the universe and see what an incredibly awesome, powerul and magnificent God we have who created all of that!
"The heavens declare the glory of God.." Psalm 19:1

December 15, 2012 at 2:30 pm |

apostate

It also says the world is flat and round like a coin with a dome on top, doesn't recognize the sun as a star, has the earth held up by pillars, has windows in the sky that must be opened for rain, and the stars are built into the firmament with water above it. The Bible uses the Babylonian world model and is wrong.

December 15, 2012 at 2:39 pm |

So...

To all the responders below.

You don't see how much more faith you need to have in an ill-defined "process" of our species developing a standard of morality. I believe that an absolute creator defined right and wrong. You opine that my cannot be true (for where is God right now?), yet you cannot explain how yours came to be. There is no testable theory. A rat learning that it gets a reward for pawing the button does not equate to a species having a collective morality. Your faith in such a process surpasses mine that is written in human history, rather than the last two centuries. It must be because we are so "enlightened" now.

Don't be an evolved rat...trying being His sheep.

December 15, 2012 at 2:23 pm |

Apple Bush

If God were real I would be the shit out of him for being so stupid.

December 15, 2012 at 2:26 pm |

Attack of the 50 Foot Magical Underwear

Is your creator the god of the bible? The one who commands and condones murder, genocide, human sacrifice, r-ape, and slavery? Is that the guy you get your morals from?

December 15, 2012 at 2:26 pm |

Stentor

That's a load of bull, there can be no justice in absolutes. Your so-called creator got the easiest question wrong, slavery, so everything else is just man's desires super-imposed on the idea of an omniscient, & omnipotent being. This idea of god is nothing more than a higher order of animism & magical thinking, not critical thinking into the origins of the universe, & eventually it will fade away, just like kooky beliefs in demons instead of bacteria or viruses, in possessions & exorcisms instead of mental conditions, in curses instead of genetic defects.
If god created mankind & all the animals, as an engineer & physicist, I would have to rate him as a pretty poor deity in that whole attention-to-detail arena, because he did a really lousy job.

December 15, 2012 at 2:32 pm |

I wonder

So,
"trying being His sheep."

A shepherd keeps his sheep safe for a couple of reasons:

- Profit from their wool, skins and flesh.
- A yummy dinner.

(the guy who thought up that "good shepherd" analogy was just silly)

December 15, 2012 at 2:35 pm |

jdmonty

To all those who deny that God exists, why don't we all plan on getting together in, let’s say, 100 years and discuss your thoughts then? I bet they will be radically different than those of today!

December 15, 2012 at 2:23 pm |

Unintelligent Designer

Calendar marked.

December 15, 2012 at 2:28 pm |

apostate

Why do you deny thousands of gods existing? Why do you deny Thor and Vishnu?

December 15, 2012 at 2:29 pm |

God Is Not Real

The question is were is GOD ? Since the late 1990's God was stolen out of our childrens class rooms and was replaced with a feeling thats kids do not care nor should they care... Schools are now full of children who have no morals .. no values ... Who is to blame for this The liberals ? you must question in side your heart were was GOD to protect thouse innocent little kids.. If this is the will of GOD .. then God said let thouse innocent children die in the hands of a devil child ... if that Devil child was raised with more family morals more honor to respect his mother an father and was raised to know right from wrong then none of this would of happened... and on that note.. GOD please take care of all the little kids that were killed while you watched high above and did nothing to protect our little ones.. Your such a wonderful an greatful GOD !

December 15, 2012 at 2:21 pm |

Attack of the 50 Foot Magical Underwear

Poe?

December 15, 2012 at 2:24 pm |

Ken

A "devil child" your "god" created. Must have been in his plans...or it wouldn't have happend.

December 15, 2012 at 2:40 pm |

Nitrogen

Where was God when 7 people were killed at a Christian school in California earlier this year? Where was God when we invaded Iraq for no good reason? Where was God when 14 Christians were killed in a Christian school in Indonesia in 1998? Where was God during the holocaust? Where was God during the 97,000 years of human existence before the Bible appeared? Where was God when natural processes seemingly independent of supernatural forces were assembling complex life capable of murder?

The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.